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Are 2 Scoring Giants Destined to Join Forces?

LONDON — With such marvelous Lilliputian players as Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández ruling the sport, soccer has not become the domain of giants.

Powerful athletes do, however, play the game.

Cristiano Ronaldo, who was running himself into form because he opposes his old team, Manchester United, in the Champions League on Wednesday, scored three times against Sevilla at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium Saturday. It was his 20th hat trick in 31/2 seasons with Madrid.

The message was manifold: When the sulking stops, Ronaldo is a world-class player. Manchester helped make him that in his six years as a United player before he moved to Madrid.

It took a world-record fee of £80 million to do that deal. Real’s president, Florentino Pérez, will doubtless change the coach by next season. And Pérez, who is campaigning to renew his mandate in June, will most surely sign a big-name marquee player to remind everyone that Madrid usually gets its man.

But as even United discovered in 2009, when Real bought Ronaldo for the equivalent of $126 million, any player who transcends England’s league has a price — and a place in the Spanish capital.

Real Madrid has bought the best ever since the great Argentine, Alfredo Di Stéfano, preferred its money to Barcelona’s in 1953. The collection of star players, los Galácticos, followed.

If Madrid can pair up Ronaldo and Bale next season, you wonder if anyone, even Barcelona, could cope with them.

Bale, for the moment, belongs to Tottenham. Correction: he carries Spurs beyond what the team might otherwise be.

No man, the saying goes, is better than his team. Messi often is. Ronaldo sometimes is. Bale, at 23, is becoming so in north London.

On Saturday, Bale did not score a hat trick. He scored two terrific goals, with huge bursts of energy, speed and finishing power. He was denied the third by Newcastle United goalie Tim Krul, who flung himself high and low, left and right, to make the saves.

But, being honest as well as gifted, Bale said he was disappointed in himself. He fluffed a chance with his right foot from beneath the crossbar. He vows that he will put in extra hours training to make his right foot more like his left.

If Madrid gets Bale, it must fork out in the region of £50 million, or almost $80 million. Tottenham has him signed to a long-term contract, and Spurs’ chairman, Daniel Levy, is probably the toughest negotiator in the Premier League.

That said, market forces usually prevail. Bale is loyal enough, but what man would resist the kind of payday that Real would tempt him with? We are talking £200,000 per week, and the prospect that he could be a Champions League winner in a city where every luxury would be afforded to the Bale family.

And Spurs, no matter their resolve to hold him, will not break its own salary structure, which is nothing like Manchester City’s or Chelsea’s, let alone Madrid’s.

“You have to hang on to your best players,” Spurs’ team manager, André Villas-Boas, said Saturday night. “Barcelona losing Messi or Real Madrid losing Ronaldo would be a disaster.

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“But there are no release clauses in English football,” Villas-Boas continued, “so it is very difficult to negotiate with Tottenham, as everyone knows. We are not willing to let our best assets go, and we can’t keep talking about this every time he does well.”

The problem is that Spurs do sell when the price is right. Some years ago it was Dimitar Berbatov and Michael Carrick being sold to Manchester United. Last summer it was Luka Modric, who was let go to Real Madrid.

Because Tottenham lost Modric’s midfield artistry, it had to find another way to overcome opponents in that area of the field. That way has increasingly become Gareth Bale.

He is great on the wing, where his turbo boost of speed can outstrip any defender, along with his instinct to cut inside and score with the power and precision of his left foot. Opponents have gotten wise to him, and they now group around him two or three at a time.

So Spurs moved him into central midfield, where because of his physical power and his ability to accelerate from nothing to full speed in an instant, he still burns off opponents, to the left or to the right.

“I don’t mind doing a job for the team,” he said Saturday. “If it’s best for me to be on the wing, I’m happy. I’m enjoying the role through the middle as well.”

Bale’s goals gave Tottenham a 2-1 victory over Newcastle at White Hart Lane stadium. “Bale is the sunshine at the Lane today,” purred David Ginola, a former winger for both clubs, commenting for Sky TV.

Given that it was a cold, gray and gloomy February weekend, that captured the performance of one man in a team sport.

The athleticism of Bale and Ronaldo make them their fortunes. But bigger than both of them, at least physically, is Manchester City’s Yaya Touré.

But with City’s hold on the English title withering, its desperation to get Touré back into the midfield backfired Saturday. City lost, 3-1, at Southampton.

Its defense was harassed and pressed back by the Saints’ sheer endeavor; it was clearly evident that the home squad was hungrier than Manchester City to win every ball.

City did not help itself. Goalkeeper Joe Hart had saved a penalty against Brazil’s Ronaldinho last Wednesday, but he took his eye off the ball and let a tame shot through his hands and legs on Saturday. Gareth Barry later scored an own goal.

Above all, there was no power from Touré. How could there be? He returned from the African Cup of Nations only on Friday, but City asked too much of the player — whose strength and stamina is prodigious — to come out of Africa into the English winter.